Sister of the Groom

Alicia Silverstone, I want so much more for you.

Sister of the Groom is an almost-delightful rom-com, but it never commits to the bit. On her 40th birthday, Audrey (Silverstone) is already dealing with layers of midlife crisis. Her career is dead, she hates her body, and she’s haunted by an ex-boyfriend despite being happily married. Her anguish boils over at the rushed wedding between her brother Liam (Hoffman) and his too-perfect French bride Clemence (Ollivier). But with so many problems to solve and only a 92-minute runtime to do it, Audrey is too winded by the end of the film to arrive at meaningful solutions.

We open with a homemade music video of Clemence, a singer, twirling and luxuriating in her own indie drawl. The harmless silliness gave me a light laugh as it’s revealed that Liam is operating the camera from a pool chair, clearly put up to this by no will of his own. But instead of building the ridiculousness of the video to a peak, it fizzles out with an understated transition to Audrey and her husband Ethan (Scott) listening to the song and making inexplicably forced small talk.

This is the first of several times that writer-director Amy Miller Gross undercuts her own jokes. Between a “fairy godmother,” a scrape with MDMA, and of course, Audrey’s rivalry with Clemence, there’s ample ground to go for broke and embrace the absurd. And with the simple hilarity of a film like Clueless on her résumé, Silverstone surely could have handled it. But Gross never takes the leap, nor does she cultivate enough tenderness to make the subtlety gratifying. It’s hard to get behind the humor of a screechy, pushy “girl fight” between the sisters-in-law when there aren’t any enjoyable female relationships to balance it out. And when Audrey fights with her brother, cries with her father, or tries to make fun of her late mother, the relationships hadn’t developed enough to let me know why I should care.

The film’s most compelling aspect is Audrey’s struggle with a hernia she sustained from giving birth years ago. Amid all of the superficial spats, her body image was the only conflict I still felt invested in by the end. But it never wraps up. Audrey and Ethan simply drive off into the morning, leaving me behind with no lessons learned besides that I should never drug my brother’s wife.

Sister of the Groom is available on VOD.